During a FarmVille 2 postmortem talk at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Zynga's FarmVille 2 design director Wright Bagwell warned fellow game designers to "never insult the player," Polygon reports. Bagwell was talking purely from a game design perspective, adding that "casual players will surprise you."

However, it's hard not to see the irony in that. Zynga, at the company level at least, tends to make rather serious assumptions about its player base. Ahem--Mafia Wars 2. Cough--The Friend Game (or lack thereof). At any rate, it's comforting that one of the lead minds on its most popular fanrchise seems to understand its audience.

"I often hear people say of casual games that their players are not 'real gamers,' that we need to get them up to speed," Bagwell said, according to Polygon. "Well, my grandmother plays FarmVille 2, and she's not very good at it. But she plays Bridge and she is amazing at it, and she's also a killer poker player."

"She's an amazing gamer. She gets games," Bagwell added. "What she doesn't get is Facebook. What she doesn't get is the iPhone. So it's not that she doesn't understand games; she's intimidated by the technology." In more ways than Zynga seems to get at the company level: Never underestimate the FarmVille fan.

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